DIY Web-Enabled Car Traffic Counter

DIY Web-Enabled Car Traffic Counter

Geoffrey Barrows is a researcher and entrepreneur based out of Washington, DC. His company Centeye focuses on computer vision systems and has recently branched out to head some Open Hardware initiatives like the ArduEye and creating the embedded vision system community Embedded Eye.

Typical applications for Centeye’s projects include being used on drones and robots for obstacle avoidances and hovering at certain distances. Barrows himself has been dabbling to see what the is possible when these image sensors are connected to the web. Seeing if the ArduEye can be used as an “Eye for the IoT”.

The result of one of his recent experiments? A web enabled traffic counter for the busy street outside of his home.

I programmed an ArduEye Aphid to detect cars using a very simple algorithm- The ArduEye grabs a small block of pixels ten times a second, and if any pixel in that block changes by more than a threshold, this is considered a car detection. The block of pixels is on the path of cars headed north-bound on my street……Next was to upload the data feed to COSM (formerly Pachube). I made use of an excellent book, Building Internet of Things with the Arduino, by Charalampos Doukas, and used an Arduino Uno to bridge the ArduEye Aphid to the internet via a WiFly shield. COSM’s API was simple enough to follow, and for the first time, one of my image sensor chips was feeding real-time data to the Internet!

Barrows and his team at Centeye have fledgling plans to develop a ultra low power module that will allow a camera module to draw less than 1mW of power at full duty cycle and monitor an environment for over a year on a single battery (coin cell battery or using ambient light and a solar cell).

It’s not hard to imagine a host of applications for this type of system moving into the future.

You can learn more about the vision systems in the video below or find more information about Centeye and their range of products at: Centeye.com